The Paperwhite is an excellent reader, probably the best I've used. Between the new display, the improved software and performance, great battery life, and Amazon's massive book selection, there's not much here to complain about. Some may nitpick the lack of a charger or the fact that you need to pay to opt out of advertising on the device — and those are negatives to be sure — but the overall picture is very clear. Amazon wants to make great reading devices for the masses, and with the Paperwhite, they just took the game to a whole new level.

There's a post with a link to a whole bunch of reviews in the Amazon Kindle forum - here.

Personally, I'd rather wait for user reviews. Well at least those that don't start of with things like "Kindle Paperwhite Review: Forget Everything Else, This Is the E-Reader You Want" (from the Gizmodo review).

An encouraging read! Now just need mine to land with my American friend, hope for import process survival, and keep everything crossed that it will work in the UK! Oh, and forlornly dreamthat it has implemented the old fashioned collections model that allows the Calibre plug-in to manage my collections again...

The technology used to light-up the new Kindle is more advanced than anything I've seen previously: Despite the limitation of an LED array — in this case, four tiny lights buried at the bottom of the screen — the entire screen glows with near-perfect evenness, no matter how bright or dim you set it.
What surprised me about the Paperwhite wasn't that Amazon finally cracked the lighting problem. It's that the lighting actually solves the other big e-ink problem: contrast. E-readers have long suffered the criticism that their pictures aren't really black-on-white, but black-on-gray. The reading experience falls short of greatness, no matter how "easy on the eyes" the technology is supposed to be.
By some color-temperature trickery, the Paperwhite's light system turns gray into white. Not only do you leave the light on all the time, but it is ideally kept at its brightest in all but direct sunlight (where you can't see the lighting). And speaking of direct sunlight, let me assure you that the Paperwhite retains the outdoor virtue of e-ink despite the lighting system and the capacitive touch sensor layer.

The bottom line is that the Kindle Paperwhite and the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight are both well-done gadgets. Each one has some advantages over the other; neither has any crippling flaws.

But that doesn’t mean that these two e-readers are evenly matched. Amazon decisively wins this round, thanks to its remarkable new screen. Unless you’ve already invested copious amounts of money in e-books from Barnes & Noble or another company — most of them aren’t easy to move onto Amazon’s hardware — the Kindle Paperwhite is the e-reader to buy. It’s the best one that Amazon, or anyone, has built to date. It’s also the best product that Amazon has sold under the Kindle moniker — a refreshing reminder that there’s always room for a device that does one thing really, really well.

The problem with the Verge review is they didn't seem to have a history with E-ink readers. Very little comparison effort, just how much they like it.

Even the battery life discussion was weak. They used it a lot on one charge. So, about how many actual hours and page turns was that (and at what brightness)? It was quite impressive for someone used to cell phones and color tablets. No sh*t Sherlock.

Curious to see one, I must admit. Hope they aren't glowing blue like in the pictures!

I did see a Nook Glow today, but I was not impressed. I thought the light was not that even and it bothered my eyes. I started seeing pale halos around words. This does not happen using my Sony in the lighted cover.

Happened to toy with a Nook STwGL today again at a Best Buy tonight, this one in the latter stages of moribundity. The light was an imperfect horizontal line at the edge of the screen and a blue casualty everywhere else. It was no match even for my PRS-350 in the official lighted case.

I'd been lamenting the fact I bought a ST for my girlfriend before the advent of the glow light. Seeing the STwGL in person again, I was glad about my purchase. The implementation makes the light more of a distraction than a feature.

Very interested in seeing the Paperwhite in person. Dropped hints with my bitter laugh that I wouldn't mind one at Xmas. We'll see how that goes.

But this isn't just a screen you look at; it's one you touch. Amazon has added a finish to the capacitive screen that feels like the paper stock used in high-end hardcover books. It's a small detail, and if it were absent, it wouldn't detract from the e-reader. But, it's a nice touch that gives the screen a tactile feel not found on other e-readers.

Actually I love the way the screen feels on my Sony 650. It feels a lot different than my iPhone, but I have no other ereader to compare it to. Also it gets a LOT less fingerprints than my iPhone. Nobody really talks about how the screen feels but actually it's one of the things I love about my ereader!